Welcome! Sky Diary’s new home is here on my official site, ChrisKridler.com (the main menu is above in case you’re looking for the Chris Kridler home page, author services, books and more). I started chasing storms in 1997 and soon after that developed a website, first on America Online and then on the web. After building Sky Diary for more than twenty years in HTML, it became a bit creaky. I’m capturing the best of SkyDiary.com and transferring it to this site for a more reader-friendly experience. See the latest chase reports here on the blog and in the new index of storm chasing reports from recent years (continually updated as I add more of the archives). Stay tuned for updates.
Here we are photographing a spectacular low-precipitation supercell with mammatus over Earth, Texas, on May 16, 2021.
Cow is our loyal companion on the road.
Alethea Kontis and I completed our storm chase in Tornado Alley and hope to find lightning storms in Florida this summer. I’m slowly updating the blog with the reports (with all the driving, there’s not a lot of time to sit at the computer). You can see all the storm chasing posts from this and previous years in the blog. You can read about our adventures here and on social media, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube (please subscribe!).
NOW ONLINE AND UPDATED: KIDSTORM! These pages are chock-full of facts about tornadoes, lightning, hurricanes and storm chasing – interesting information for kids and grown-ups, too. Go!
Being a morning person is a good quality for a photographer who strives to capture the best light of the day. I’m not a morning person. However, I will drag myself out of bed for a predawn SpaceX launch in hopes of getting cool light effects. Only this morning I woke up extra early, took the dogs out and found the launch had been …
Another day, another rocket launch from the Space Coast – only it’s never routine. Especially when you have a SpaceX Heavy launch, a beautiful twilight and the return of two boosters to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Of course, someday I’d like to be super close to the booster return. I’ve seen a booster return from the Cape (and other places), but always with …
I’m competitive. I try not to be. I know this society is all about WINNING ALL THE TIME. And I want to win and get approval and all of those things. But I don’t like my competitive tendencies all that much. They lead to comparison-itis, which plays a lot into my writing career. Not so much my photography, because I know I don’t always …
In a year when my spring storm chase with Alethea Kontis didn’t yield all that many storms – mostly because of bad timing and an uncooperative May – I’m grateful for what I did see in 2022, including spectacular space launches and, yes, dramatic skies. I’m still limiting travel thanks to the pandemic, not to mention other obligations (work, writing books, and so on), …
Every launch is a little different, even when you see them from the same place over and over. We got to treat visiting friends to a SpaceX launch from a prime viewing spot at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on December 8, and it was still fresh and uniquely challenging for me as I tried to take photos. The trajectory for the rocket, carrying …
It may alarm you to know that I write poetry. I don’t do it as often as I used to. I’m more prosaic now, I guess. I write a lot of fiction. But once in a while, a moment strikes me. More on that in a minute. I wandered over to the central Brevard County, Florida, beaches today to take photos. It wasn’t easy …
I don’t have much to say except WOW! But I guess I should tell the story behind this unusual photo (below) of the launch of Artemis in the wee hours of November 16 from Kennedy Space Center. We weren’t able to get passes for this launch, so we weren’t anywhere close to the launch site at Kennedy Space Center. For a previous attempt, we …
